She shot one penetrating look at me, and then turned her face away with a slightly impatient movement.  If she could have run away then she would, but I held the means of exit in my own power.  ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ thought I, and I went on rapidly, anyhow.

’He talked so much about you, just before he left—­that night after he had been here, you know—­and you had given him those flowers.’  She put her hands up to hide her face, but she was listening now—­listening with all her ears.  ’He had never spoken much about you before, but the sudden going away unlocked his heart, and he told me how he loved you, and how he hoped on his return that you might be his wife.’

‘Don’t,’ said she, almost gasping out the word, which she had tried once or twice before to speak; but her voice had been choked.  Now she put her hand backwards; she had quite turned away from me, and felt for mine.  She gave it a soft lingering pressure; and then she put her arms down on the wooden division, and laid her head on it, and cried quiet tears.  I did not understand her at once, and feared lest I had mistaken the whole case, and only annoyed her.  I went up to her.  ’Oh, Phillis!  I am so sorry—­I thought you would, perhaps, have cared to hear it; he did talk so feelingly, as if he did love you so much, and somehow I thought it would give you pleasure.’

She lifted up her head and looked at me.  Such a look!  Her eyes, glittering with tears as they were, expressed an almost heavenly happiness; her tender mouth was curved with rapture—­her colour vivid and blushing; but as if she was afraid her face expressed too much, more than the thankfulness to me she was essaying to speak, she hid it again almost immediately.  So it was all right then, and my conjecture was well-founded!  I tried to remember something more to tell her of what he had said, but again she stopped me.

‘Don’t,’ she said.  She still kept her face covered and hidden.  In half a minute she added, in a very low voice, ’Please, Paul, I think I would rather not hear any more I don’t mean but what I have—­but what I am very much obliged—­Only—­only, I think I would rather hear the rest from himself when he comes back.’

And then she cried a little more, in quite a different way.  I did not say any more, I waited for her.  By-and-by she turned towards me—­not meeting my eyes, however; and putting her hand in mine just as if we were two children, she said,—­

’We had best go back now—­I don’t look as if I had been crying, do I?’

‘You look as if you had a bad cold,’ was all the answer I made.

’Oh! but I am quite well, only cold; and a good run will warm me.  Come along, Paul.’

So we ran, hand in hand, till, just as we were on the threshold of the house, she stopped,—­

‘Paul, please, we won’t speak about that again.’

PART IV